


while you're here in my arms

by thelilacfield



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Attempted Sex, Drunkenness, F/M, First Kiss, Meet-Cute, Partying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-04 02:16:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14582715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilacfield/pseuds/thelilacfield
Summary: Drinking, dancing and losing friends is to be expected at Stark house parties. A handsome boy who jumps into a pool to rescue dropped jewellery, however, is not.





	while you're here in my arms

**A/N:** Another college AU, because I can't stop. Title from  _Die Young_ by Kesha (yes, really).

* * *

"Remind me again how we know this host?" Wanda says, leaning closer to the mirror to bring her eyeliner to the sharpest point possible, smirking to herself at Darcy's utterly offended expression when Okoye rejects a shot of something sickly sweet and sticks to her own bottle.

"Nat's trying to get in with that curly-haired science guy and turns out he knows Stark so she used her feminine wiles to get an invite," Maria says, ruffling Natasha's hair at a glare shot her way. "I'm not complaining about free booze courtesy of Howard Stark's energy empire."

"You think Stark's gonna have cute friends?" Darcy asks, swaying even sitting down as she tries to buckle the strap on her heels, tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth in concentration.

"Maybe you should think about something other than men," Okoye says, pulling the bottle of peach schnapps away from Darcy before she can refill her novelty shot glass, ignoring the glassy-eyed glare she's getting.

"Not all of us can be engaged at twenty-one," Darcy says, and tosses her hair over her shoulder, giving her dress a tug to make it even more indecent. "Okay, let's go. We gotta go meet the boys."

A few extra spritzes of hairspray and perfume later and they're making their way to the Chinese takeout on the corner, Sam overexaggerating his sighs of relief when they all remove their orders from the bulging bag dangling from his hand and making them roll their eyes. T'Challa links arms with Okoye, the two of them walking ahead and talking about something serious in low voices, and Wanda clamps a hand to Darcy's shoulder to stop her stumbling into the road. "You gonna get it with the Banner kid tonight, Nat?" Sam asks cheerfully, and whimpers when Natasha smacks him hard in the shoulder.

"You know Thor, the big guy who works at the gym?" Scott asks. "He knows Banner. They like study together or some shit, anyway, there's a connection. We can get you in there, Nat."

"I hate you all," Natasha says, and storms off ahead to walk with T'Challa and Okoye while Sam and Scott guffaw in a mildly drunken manner.

Tony Stark's place is ridiculously opulent for a student, just as she might expect the son of Howard Stark to live, and already flooded with people in varying stages of drunkenness. Faces Wanda recognises float past, some calling her name and returning her waves, and Darcy and Sam leave the group as soon as they're inside, away in search of someone to break the rules about not going into bedrooms with. "Romanoff!" comes a shout, and Wanda turns to find Tony Stark himself walking towards them, flanked as usual by the curly-haired science student Natasha has a crush on and the guy who is perpetually in line in front of Wanda at the library coffee counter. "Lovely to see you here. What do you think?"

"Ridiculous," Natasha says, and walks past him into the bustle of the party. Tony looks after her, then shrugs and turns to Wanda.

"You must be a friend of that charming woman," he says with a grin. "I'm Tony. This is Bruce and Rhodey."

"You're always behind me in line to get coffee," Rhodey says, and Wanda smiles. "Wanda, right?"

"Well, eat, drink, be merry," Tony says, and the end of his sentence is punctuated by a loud splash from outside. "Well, looks like they found the pool. Good thing I put condoms in every room."

"Aren't you a considerate host," Wanda observes, and he gives her a grin before vanishing back into the party, and next thing Wanda knows she's further into the party, dancing, a drink in her hand and then another, the world pleasantly fuzzy and her confidence at full, talking to everyone and anyone she vaguely recognises. She's lost all her friends, and doesn't care.

Stumbling out of the back door of the house with another cup of punch in hand, she finds the pool everyone has been talking about, catches a glimpse of Darcy ferociously kissing someone in the deep end and grins into her drink. Kicking her heels off to join a pile of shoes, she sits down carefully in her tight skirt, feet dangling in the pleasantly cool water in the warm night, drink in hand and the bass from inside the house making the ground shake beneath her.

"Can I sit here?" Turning around at an unfamiliar voice, she feels her heart skip several beats when she looks up into very blue eyes, making a vague gesture instead of actually saying anything to the guy sitting down next to her, a beer in one hand and his hair falling in his eyes, shirt clinging to him and long legs dangling in the water. He turns to her, smiles a devastating smile and says, "I'm Vision."

"Wanda," she says, returning his smile, and starts when he takes her hand and presses a polite kiss to her palm, the way he's looking at her making her mouth dry. "So...how do you know Tony?"

"Same class with Professor Pym, we've gotten pretty close," he says cheerfully. "You?"

"Friend of a friend," she says, and he's looking at her so intensely that her stomach is doing flips, her heart racing, something about the alcohol and the atmosphere making it important that she gives the flirting everything she has right now.

"Well, I'm glad you're here," he says, and moves a little closer so they're touching all down their sides, sending electricity sparking through her. "I...I think you're the prettiest one in this whole party."

She blushes, feeling the heat of it under her make-up, and gives him a bashful smile. "Don't be silly," she says, and he grins.

"I'm not," he says. "I said it, as soon as you walked in. I was with Tony, and I saw you, and I told him you're the prettiest girl I've ever seen. And he told me to go for it, but I'm too shy when I'm sober, you see. It's a curse, really. But now I've had some drinks, and I saw you out here sitting by yourself, and I thought I'd come over just to see if maybe you might be interested."

"You know what?" she breathes, looking into his eyes. "I am." Pulling her feet up out of the pool, shaking them vaguely dry, she gives him a soft smile and asks, "Do you want to go inside and dance?"

"I didn't think I'd get this far," Vision mumbles, more to himself than to her, and she smiles helplessly. Running a hand through her hair, she tries to grab for the ring that comes loose, and can only stare hopelessly as it bounces off her finger and into the pool, sinking immediately.

"Shit, that was a present," she hisses, and is about to call out for someone already in the pool to try and retrieve it for her when Vision slides off the edge and into the water, fully-clothed, and ducks under before she can stop him.

Surfacing shaking his hair out of his eyes, looking like the hero from some ridiculous romantic comedy filled to the brim with unlikely hijinks, Vision smiles at her and holds her ring out in the palm of his hand. "For you," he says sweetly, and she shakes her head with a sort of fondness, holding out a hand to help him out and onto the side, dripping water and gaining a lot of looks and laughs from the chunk of the party that's spilled outside.

"Vizh, you're soaking wet," she murmurs, the nickname slipping out without her meaning to, and he looks down at himself in seeming surprise.

"Oops," he breathes, and she giggles at how adorable he sounds. "I'm supposed to be staying here tonight, I have things to change into."

"Let's get you inside," she says, and takes his hand to pull him past the knots of drunk college students, back into the booming noise of the party and a staircase mercifully unoccupied by couples.

"Get it, Wanda!" comes a yell from downstairs, and she glances between the slats of the banister to see Maria grinning up at her, giving her a thumbs up, and rolls her eyes.

"Which one is your room?" she asks a slightly swaying Vision, who pulls a key out of his pocket and unlocks the third door. "Oh, smart. Means no one can get in there to use it for drunk party hook-ups."

"Only me," Vision says, and her heart skips, trying not to think about just falling onto the - very nice, comfortable-looking - bed with him. She's not the girl who hooks up, she's  _not_. Not with anyone. Not even very sweet, charming boys with English accents who jump into pools fully-clothed because she dropped her ring like an idiot.

"Okay, you need to change or you'll wake up with a cold  _and_  a hangover tomorrow," she says gently, and Vision immediately unearths a suitcase from under the bed - a  _suitcase_ , she's being very obviously flirted with by someone who genuinely brings a suitcase to stay over at a friend's place after a wild party - and grabs a bundle of clothes.

Her breath catches when he peels his soaking wet shirt off, unable to make herself look away from drinking him in. A stupidly perfect body, that she would very much like to be on top of, steadying herself on the dresser so she doesn't stumble. Vision glances back at her, swaying where he stands, and immediately says, "Oh, I'm sorry, should I wait for you to leave? I don't wanna make you uncomfortable."

"I'm not," she says softly, and he meets her eyes, a promise passing between them that she's seen happen to other people. But never her. She's not the girl who crosses the room in three short strides and kisses someone she barely met an hour ago, tightens her arms around his neck and presses herself against his bare chest - but she is tonight, and it feels so good to throw caution to the wind. Vision kisses her back with just as much intensity, hands cupping over the small of her back to pull her close, and when that first head-spinning kiss ends they're both breathing heavily.

"You're sure about this?" he asks softly, and she nods, threading her fingers into his hair to bring their mouths back together, kissing him frantically, aching to feel more of him, the first soft groan she hears from him making her stomach clench with arousal.

The room shifts, and suddenly they're on the bed, and his lips are on her neck, and his fingers are straying from her back to the zip on her skirt, and he's hesitating and moving away to blink down at her and say, "I don't have any condoms."

"I'm on the pill, don't worry," she murmurs, and pulls him in for another kiss, his tongue hot against hers, their hips pressing together and making her moan before he pulls away, his eyes glazed with lust.

"Better safe than sorry," he murmurs, despite her protesting tugs on his shoulders. "Tony keeps condoms in the bathroom, I won't be long. Can you wait?"

Staring greedily at his chest before he grabs a shirt to cover himself, she breathes, "Not long," and gives him a smirk before he yanks the door open and she's left sitting at the end of the bed, her breathing loud in the quiet and a grin on her lips.

She jerks up from the bed when Vision returns with Sam and Rhodey supporting him, paler than when he left her, and Sam doesn't even react to seeing her with smeared lipstick and her shirt half-unbuttoned. "What happened?" she asks frantically, and Rhodey shakes his head.

"Someone had one too many and it finally came back to bite him in the ass," he says, and tips Vision onto the bed, leaving him lying face-down on top of the blankets. "Needs to sleep it off." Setting a glass of water on the nightstand, he turns to Wanda and says, "Sorry for whatever this idiot subjected you too. He doesn't drink very often, in case that wasn't obvious."

"We better get going, Wanda, Darcy already headed off with some boy and T'Challa and Okoye just called an Uber," Sam says. "Go find your shoes so we can go home, I'll try and round up the rest."

They end up only successfully finding Maria, and picking up Quill who happens to be going their way, the rest occupied and seemingly absorbed by the party. Crammed into the backseat, Wanda quietly thinks about Vision, regret for not seeing it through a sharp spike in her gut.

* * *

Her phone is ringing. Stupidly loudly, grinding against her pounding head, and she lifts her head from her mascara-stained pillow to grab it and growl, " _What_?" without checking who it is.

"I  _need_  coffee," Natasha groans into the phone. "Starbucks. Twenty minutes."

Rolling out of bed, she gives up before she's even begun on attempting to look presentable, pulling her hair back into a braid and quickly wiping away the smeared remnants of last night's make-up, grabbing a pair of leggings and her oversized NYU hoodie to make something resembling an outfit, trainers and sunglasses completing the obviously hungover look. Throwing a series of random objects haphazardly into her backpack, she runs down the stairs into sunlight so bright she winces even behind sunglasses, only the thought of caffeine keeping her moving towards Starbucks.

Natasha, Sam and Okoye are already clustered around a table in the back, Sam clutching his head while Okoye smugly sips her coffee, bright-eyed and clearly perfectly fine. "Ordered your iced thing," Natasha says vaguely, pushing a cup towards Wanda that she cradles gratefully to her chest. "God, going to that party was a terrible idea."

"You didn't think that when you were dancing with science boy," Sam says, but even his attempt at teasing is weak, ruined by a hangover. "You get any?"

"I got his number, if that's what you mean," Natasha says, and Sam holds his hand out for a high five, wincing when she hits him too hard. "You deserve that for being such a little shit."

"Who's a little shit?" comes Maria's voice, and she throws her leather jacket over the back of a chair, folding herself down and slinging her legs over the arm. "That was a  _great_  party."

"Not worth the hangover," Wanda mumbles, and Maria turns to her with eyes gleaming.

"You sure about that?" she asks, arching an eyebrow. "You definitely looked like you were having  _fun_."

"You hooked up?!" Sam exclaims, hangover apparently forgotten as he straightens up and looks at Wanda with a grin. "Oh my God, your first one! I'm so proud of you!"

"No, I tried to," she says shortly, knowing she's being snappy but too tired to be anything else. "With the guy you had to put to bed because he was too drunk, Sam."

"Oh  _shit_ ," Sam says. "Really? Because he's right over there." Turning in her chair so fast that it jolts her aching head, Wanda's heart skips to see Vision waiting patiently at the counter, juggling sandwiches for toasting between his hands and lips moving, mumbling to himself. "You gonna go talk to him?"

"I do kinda want a scone," she says to no one in particular, and crosses the café to stand behind Vision in the queue, reaching up to tap him on the shoulder before she loses her nerve. "Hi."

He turns to see her and starts violently, a blush immediately darkening his cheeks. "I am  _so_ sorry," he groans, unable to even meet her eyes. "I was so obnoxious, I promise I don't normally flirt like that, I don't normally flirt  _at all_ , I just didn't know what to do because you are very pretty and I've seen you around campus a lot and always thought you were very pretty, I didn't know you would be at that party and I didn't know how to talk to you, and I stupidly thought drinking too much would help and I didn't mean for us to have sex, I really didn't, and I am so sorry that I was drunk and pushy and stupid, and I understand if you never want to talk to me ever."

Blinking up at him, she reaches up to cup his cheek and force him to look at her before she teases, "That was quite the speech, Vision." His eyes dart away from her, and she smiles slightly before she says, "You weren't obnoxious or pushy or stupid. A little drunk...maybe." Despite everything, a slight smile pulls at the corners of his mouth and she grins back at him. "I thought it was cute. I promise. I kissed you first. If I hadn't wanted that, we wouldn't have ended up where we did."

"Oh." She can't help giggling at his response, the genuine surprise in his eyes. "You aren't mad?"

"I'm only mad that we got interrupted," she says, and he blushes even deeper, dropping one of the sandwiches he's holding. Bending low to pick it up, feeling his gaze on her, she straightens up and asks, "Are you free another evening this week? I'd like to get to know you better."

"I...I think I have a night free on Thursday," he says, and she smiles.

"Perfect."


End file.
